Page:Romeo and Juliet (Dowden).djvu/113

he is[C 1] the courageous captain of compliments.[E 1] He fights as you sing prick-song,[E 2] keeps time, distance, and proportion;[E 3] rests me his minim rest,[C 2] one, two, and the third in your bosom; the very butcher of a silk button,[E 4] a duellist, a 25 duellist; a gentleman of the very first house[E 5], of the first and second cause.[E 6] Ah, the im- mortal passado![E 7] the punto reverso![E 8] the hay![E 9]

Ben.

The what?

Mer.	The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting 30

1. 21. he is] Q 1; he's Q, F.
2. 23, 24. rests … rest] Q 1, Malone; he rests, his minum rests Q; he rests his minum, F.

1. 21. captain of compliments] Johnson: "master of the laws of ceremony." Compare Lovers Labour's Lost, I. i. 169:

   "A man of complements, whom right and wrong
   Have chose as umpire of their mutiny."

2. 22. prick-song] divisions or descant upon a Plain-song or Ground, … written, or pricked down, in contradistinction to those performed extemporaneously (Grove, Dict. of Music). Ascham, Toxophilus (ed. Arber, p. 41): "I wysshe … that the laudable custome of Englande to teache chyldren their plainesonge and priksong, were not so decayed."
3. 22, 23. time, distance, and proportion] Steevens compares Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, I. iv. (Bobadil teaching Matthew to fence): "note your distance, keep your due proportion of time."
4. 25. button] Steevens quotes The Returne from Parnassus (p. 86, ed. Macray): "Strikes his poinado at a buttons breadth." Staunton quotes Silver, Paradoxes of Defence, 1599: "Signior Rocca … thou that takest upon thee to hit anie Englishman with a thrust upon anie button." So Massinger, Unnatural Combat, II. ii.: "He can teach Our modern duellists how to cleave a button."
5. 26. first house] may mean best family; or, in a heraldic sense, the sons of the original ancestors as distinguished from the issue of those sons (forming "the second house"). In Fletcher's Woman's Prize, IV. i., "a gentleman of the first house" may mean an upstart. See also Dyce's note on Fletcher's Women Pleased, I. iii. (vol. vii. p. 16), where the expression occurs.
6. 27. first and second cause] Compare Love's Labour's Lost, I. ii. 184, and As You Like It, V. iv. 52–69, for the methodised causes of quarrel. It is doubtful whether Vincentio Saviola's "Of honor and honorable Quarrels" in his Practice of the Rapier and Dagger is alluded to in As You Like It.
7. 28. passado] Explained by Saviola as a step forward or aside in fencing; see Love's Labour's Lost, I. ii. 185.
8. 28. punto reverso] a back-handed stroke; Saviola: "You may give him a punta either dritta or riversa."
9. 28. hay] a home-thrust, Ital. hai, thou hast (it). Compare Lat. habet, exclaimed when a gladiator was wounded. (New Eng. Dict.)